Cyber Crime Law

Cyber Crime Law: U.S. v. Tien Truong Nguyen



Cyber Crime Law: U.S. v. Tien Truong Nguyen

Introduction

Internet has spawned new forms of crimes and made old crimes easier to commit, cyber-stalking, identity theft, child pornography, fraud and scams, copyright violations, hacking and creating malicious code, the list goes on and on. In a 2003 survey conducted by the CSI with the participation of the San Francisco Federal Bureau of Investigation's Computer Intrusion Squad, of the 530 respondents made up of U.S. corporations, government agencies, financial institutions, medical institutions and universities, 56% reported unauthorized use of their computer systems (Reyes, 2007).

The total financial loss amongst 251 respondents who chose to report it was $201,797,340. Of that amount the greatest portion, $70,195,900, was lost due to theft of proprietary information, the next biggest portion, $65,643,300, was lost due to denial of service attacks. The two highest methods of attack or misuse reported were virus incidents, 82%, and insider abuse of network connections, 80%. It can be seen from the above statistics that Internet is still very much a lawless place, the question is what are the authorities doing on it.

Case of U.S. v. Tien Truong Nguyen

That Tien Truong Nguyen, 34, worked with Romanian scammers to drive users to websites that were set up to look up like they belonged to legitimate financial institutions. After victims entered their information on the sites, Nguyen sold the data to two alleged co-conspirators, Stefani Ruland and Ryan Price, who used the information to set up lines of credit -- typically between US$1,000 and $2,000 -- at instant credit kiosks at Wal-Mart stores. They used those lines, as well as fake credit cards made using the stolen data, to purchase products from Wal-Mart, which they then sold for cash. Prosecutors say Ruland and Price stole ...